Thursday, early AM, we were awakened by the sound of a steady rain. The rain was expected so we knew any significant time spent outside on Thursday would be quite wet. Luckily we did not have any plans to hike or go biking...ha ha.
We got downstairs a bit earlier today and sat in the living room talking with some of the other folks staying at the B&B. One couple was from Pismo Beach, one from Valencia and one from London/Israel. We sat and talked and ate breakfast until after 9am. We then got ready and headed off to Sugarbush Farms.
Sugarbush Farms is a working farm and also produces various grades of maple syrups and ages and packages various cheeses. We sampled some Vermont cheeses and maple syrups and watched a video on the farm. The main theme of the video was that "god loves farmers, farming is hard work, and it takes a lot of maple sap to make a little maple syrup." One cool thing in the video was an innovation in the maple sap collection process. The old-school way is to tap the tree and then hang a bucket off the tap. Eventually someone needs to detach the bucket and dump it into a central container. The new-fangled method involves tapping the tree and then interconnecting the trees with what looks like drip irrigation tubing that all funnels into a central collection tank on a cart. Seems like the tube method would save a lot of time and labor. Another thing we learned at the farm was that as tough/stressful/frustrating as our jobs can be at times, there are definitely worse jobs...two of which are: 1. the person who manually wraps the 8 oz blocks of cheese in tin foil and 2. the person who drips the foil wrapped cheese blocks into the various waxes many, many, many times to seal them for freshness. Rosie and I estimated our over/under on going insane doing either of those jobs at about 15 minutes. See the picture of the person dipping the cheese in wax.
After leaving the farm, we headed down to the southern part of the state to view some more fall colors and to stop by some local shops (i.e. wood shops, country stores, and quilt shops). The first place we stopped was at the Vermont Country Store in Rockingham. The store had a ton of nostalgic toys and candies from our childhoods. All I have to say to Sandy and Jay about our gifts for Chris and Amy is that..."I hope your dental premiums are paid up!" We also bought Rosie a locally bottled bottle of raspberry lime rickey soda. The report on the soda was...good but not great. The Bar Harbor blueberry is still the trip champ.
We next stopped at a quilting store in Chester. The store had a crazy amount of fabrics for sale. They also offered classes in quilting. Rosie talked to one of the store-keepers about the amount of time it takes to make a quilt and found out it is very labor intensive. She learned that some of the quilts can take up to 6 months to make working on them regularly. I guess this would explain the hefty price tag on some ($1000+). Most of the queen size quilts seem to be about $750. Rosie saw a really nice Halloween/autumn quilt, but it was not for sale. It was on display so that they can sell the kits to make the quilt. Although the kit to produce it was for sale. I recommended to Rosie that she buy the kit and learn to quilt by hand and if she finished that first one by hand, she could sell it in order to buy herself a sewing machine for future projects. I will just say...this recommendation was not well received...end of story.
Before heading to our ultimate destination (a wood bowl store near Bennington) we stopped by a deli for a quick bite. Our deli experience summed up much of the customer service attitude of many staff in some of the more mid-range establishments in Vermont. Rosie wanted a Philly cheese steak sandwich on a baguette roll. But apparently the deli was out of rolls and offered her a wrap instead...she ended up opting for a bowl of soup. As we were ordering, a gentleman who had just received his advertised lunch special (sandwich, chips, dessert and drink) sans the chips came up to inquiry about his missing chips. The cashier informed him that they were out of chips until the next order of chips arrived and that there would be no substitution...end of story. Ah...service with a smile.
We eventually meandered our way to the bowl store. The store had some beautiful wood products, but most of them were made from multiple pieces of wood that were glued together. And anyone who knows Rosie know that she prefers items made from one piece of wood. We did end up buying a couple of items but no bowls. Christmas gifts this year will be full of wood products... Just to give you some warnings. Disclaimer: If you play your cards right that is, and don't offend me from now til then... Else you may be downgraded to getting a plastic moose or something equivalent.
We headed back up north on the western edge of Vermont and saw many beautiful shades of reds, oranges, yellows and browns. We ended up cutting over to our B&B through Plymouth Notch (where Calvin Coolidge was raised and where he was sworn in as president when Warren G. Harding died in 1923). The drive through this valley with its rivers and lake was idyllic and serene. As we drove up a steep hill from Plymouth Notch to Bridgewater Corners, we thanked ourselves for being smart enough to be in a car and not on bikes...like Deb and Jack were.
We had dinner at the restaurant (Corners Inn Restaurant) next to our B&B. We split a caesar salad, Rosie had the cioppino and I had the veal parm. The food was good...a bit over-garlic'd, but good none-the-less. It is hard to figure out how these type of businesses survive in this area. At 5:45pm, we were outnumbered by staff by about an 8:1 ratio. Additionally, the plates were immensely huge and they need a lot of food on those plates to fill them up. Rosie ate about 1/2 of her cioppino before she was full. We are now at the B&B packing up and figuring out our plan for tomorrow. We fly out of Portland, ME at 2:45pm, eventually arriving at SFO at 11:45pm. Portland is about 75 miles as the crow flies, but about 200 miles driving.
Addendum: before signing off, I forgot to post my rant about Subaru Outback drivers (sorry Missy, I hope your Subaru is not an Outback). This trip has confirmed a long-held belief of mine. ..Subaru drivers, and more specifically, Subaru Outback drivers are the worst, slowest, most clueless drivers on the planet. Is it a coincidence that all these drivers are driving Subaru Outbacks...or is it the car that makes these drivers bad? I don't know that this question has an answer, but serious research should be devoted to this topic. Other factors that will need to be accounted for in this research are: why do all these cars have Obama bumper stickers on them?...is there something in the glue that seeps into the person's skin that affects his/her driving skills and awareness?; why do the drivers feel a need to place a VT bumper sticker on the car?...I already know they are from Vermont because they have a Vermont license plate; can a Subaru actually go more then 18 miles an hour...I think that is the top speed I saw one doing downhill on a 65 mph freeway...just curious. Rant over.
This will be the last blog post for this trip. Thanks for following along with our travels. Back to the dreaded elliptical... Stay turned for our next trip: Savannah/Charleston in March/April 2009.
Take care.
Rick and Rosie
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